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Renting Your Home

Renting Your Home, a Boston, MA based startup focused on attracting and managing qualified tenants online for landlords , contacted Ki Teknology to manage the design and development of its company website through a series of strict venture capital funding timeline milestones and company launch deadlines. Ki Teknology's staff coordinated with Boston-based firm Trionia and adapted its process oriented development methodology to accommodate a more flexible development methodology appropriately suited to this entrepreneurial project. That's how Ki Teknology, using its deep international supply network of developers and project managers, launched its first U.S. based development project in 2008. Renting Your Home enjoyed the benefits of a flexible design staff, as well as the benefits of Ki Teknology's systematic approach to project management, and was included early in user-testing phases and dialogue in order to ultimately meet every project deadline on time and according to specification.

Renting Your Home Profile

Launched in 2008, Renting Your Home is the one-stop solution for small landlords in the United States to rent, service, and collect income for their apartments.

Renting Your Home was founded and launched by entrepreneur and Babson MBA Jeff Takle, who currently heads management of the company for its customer base spread across all 50 states of America.

Renting Your Home offers professional property website construction, advertising, online rental applications, credit checks, leases and forms, rent collection, maintenance and support services, record keeping and debt collection services to help small landlords manage all aspects of the rental process from start to finish.

The main competitive advantages of this company are strong management, first mover advantage and its full-service, no-hassle business strategy.

Analysis of the Problem

Following the commitment of funding from Venture Capital investors, Renting Your Home was place under strict project launch timeline restrictions and needed to develop a transactional, flawlessly functioning website ready to handle any sudden rapid inflow of orders and web traffic generated from its coinciding media launch campaign.

"The client really knew the ins and outs of his business and his system requirements and in very little time produced a list of general requirements that we wanted to further specify. The best solution: create control meetings with the client to determine and understand the exact correct requirements and then implement them. In this method, the client was given the means to express exactly how his business lines could be represented and this was realized during the development process. This type of frequent and direct coordination process with a client was new for us and was an adaptation that had never happened before" says Sergio Covarrubias, Lead Project Manager.

Ki Teknology needed to adapt a thorough development methodology designed for larger, transaction based projects to accommodate a smaller, flexible design process appropriately suited to the needs of the client and his project deadlines in this particular case, and the company needed to do all of this without compromising the end-product quality for which it is known by international clients.

Solution

Regarding the companies' collaboration Jeff states: "Ki Teknology is much more process-oriented than I am used to and it was an adjustment on both our parts. We settled on an agile development methodology that met both our needs, however, and the result was that I got the benefits of a flexible design staff, as well as the benefits of their systematic approach to project management.

They included me early in the user testing phases and our dialogue evolved to a give and take, back and forth, that suited my personality well.

In the end, they met every deadline. In our later meetings, the communication with Ki Teknology improved substantially. It was previously hampered by the language barrier and some cultural differences. But Ki Teknology adapted immediately and within 1 or 2 meetings, we were absolutely back on track.

On December 11, 2008, Renting Your Home was featured in an article about entrepreneurs in the New York Times Magazine, and the site received a high volume of traffic. The work Ki Teknology had completed just 7 days earlier proved critical for converting that traffic into paying customers. If they'd overrun the deadlines, I would have missed that upsurge in customer traffic."

Lessons Learned

Regarding lessons learned, Ki Teknology Project Manger Sergio Covarrubias states:

"Best practices in the field of customer care are applicable to any culture or language. Punctuality and project milestones are interpreted differently across borders, and for this project we were sure to focus on applying the rigor of the typical American ethos, Customers ultimately noticed this difference which benefited Ki Teknology.

Clients appreciate initiative and a customer feels comfortable with a proactive vendor that accommodates it and is committed to achieving the expected outcomes."

Quote

"In the end, I'm happy with the decision to work with Ki Teknology. I was able to manage costs, deliver the product on time, and dramatically improve the quality of our product line."

Jeff Takle

President and COO

Renting Your Home